Literature / The Grimnoir Chronicles

The Grimnoir Chronicles is an Alternate History fantasy taking place in the early 1930s. Sometime in the 1800s magic appeared in the world, giving a small fraction of the population (the Actives) one of a standard set of super-powers, such as fire, healing, and teleporting. Just like his other series, Larry Correia provides some of the best action scenes out there, fueled by pure distilled Rule of Cool. A gravity-controlling private eye teams up with a guy who can walk through walls to fight a bulletproof samurai. A teleporting ninja with a katana goes up against a teleporting Oklahoma girl with a shotgun. Bullets fly, demons are summoned, and stuff blows up.

The first in the series is Hard Magic (released May 3 2011). After Jake Sullivan fails to bring in his former Love Interest for murder, he makes some inquiries and finds out that things aren't what they seem. He's soon caught up with a secret society (the Grimnoir) sworn to stop the Japanese Imperium, led by the indestructible Chairman Tokugawa, from taking over the world. At the same time, an Okie named Faye witnesses the murder of her adoptive grandfather at the hands of a mysterious one-eyed man. His dying command is for her to protect a strange mechanical device, designed by someone named Tesla.

The sequel Spellbound is out as of November 1 2011. It follows up on some of the sequel bait from the first book — such as the entity stated to be pursuing The Power itself.

The third book, Warbound was released in August 2013.

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This work uses the following tropes:

• Accent Upon The Wrong Syllable: Harkeness... speaks in... THIS manner.
• Action Girl: Both Faye and Delilah.
  • And in the second book, Hammer. And Whisper, who throws a gods's fire back at it.
• Affably Evil: The Chairman is really a very pleasant man, when he isn't subjugating whole nations or ripping the soul out of your body.
• The Alcatraz: Rockville Penitentiary, the supermax prison for Actives.
• Alien Geometries: The Power seems to be made of strange glyphs that are strange but can be grasped by the human mind. The Pathfinder's minions in Warbound are so complex and bizarre that even Fuller has trouble grasping them.
• All Your Base Are Belong to Us: The Imperium Shadow Guard destroys 3 of the 4 Grimnoir strongholds in Shanghai before the attack on the false Chairman in Warbound, killing dozens of Knights, including Lance.
• All Your Powers Combined: It's subtly hinted at at the end of Spellbound, and outright stated by Fuller in Warbound: Faye isn't a Traveler. She's actually a Cog, whose power manifests in her understanding and being able to use all the powers. She's not just a teleporting agent of chaos, she's a teleporting agent of chaos who can heal the injured, read your mind, and unleash black holes
  • Not as such. Chairman qualifies though.
• Almighty Janitor/ Badass Bureaucrat: "Anyone ever tell you you're the best accountant ever, Chandler? (Raymond)"
• Alternate History: Aside from the major change of people starting to gain magical abilities in the mid-19th century some more traditional changes are Teddy Roosevelt pursuing a military career rather than a political one and becoming a general who dies in The Great War, Hitler being executed in 1929, the Great Dust Bowl getting an early start due to a misaimed government attempt at weather manipulation in 1929 (in OTL it didn't get really bad until 1933) and the Titanic being saved by an Active.
• An Ice Person: Iceboxes.
• Analogy Backfire: When one of the Grimnoir elders skeptically refers to the Pathfinder as Sullivan's "white whale," Sullivan points out that the whale was real.
• And I Must Scream: Zombies are in this situation, since when they're brought back to life their injuries keep on hurting.
• Animal Eye Spy: Beasties, such as Lance Talon.
• Anti-Hero: Harkeness turns out to be a Grimnoir knight, who killed Pershing as part of a longer plan to defeat the Chairman. When Browning finds out, he still kills him for it, though Harkeness doesn't try to fight it.
• Anti-Magic: The Dymaxion Nullifier, created by Fuller, is introduced in Spellbound, and it cancels all attempts at making connection with Power within its range^note Though if, for example, you take a possession of an animal outside of dymaxion's range and then use it to get into range, you don't get evicted from the critter.. You can destroy them magically, it's just not a good idea, as it requires spellbinding a Nixie's power... which is unleashing black holes.
• ApocalypseHow / ClassX5: Universes are being destroyed.
• Ascended Extra: Lady Origami and Master Saito have very minor parts in Hard Magic but return for a much larger role in the sequels.
• Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: Spellbound's finale has a skyscraper-sized Demon, the most powerful in existence, attacking Washington, DC due to Crow's Deal with the Devil.
• Babies Ever After: Sullivan marries Lady Origami and fathers a son at the end of the third book.
• Back-to-Back Badasses: Sullivan and Toru at the end of Warbound.
• Badass Adorable: Faye is so cute that Browning jokes it must be the result of a spell, and so powerful that she can destroy an entire battleship single-handedly in less than five minutes.
• Badass Boast:
  • Toru and Sullivan exchange them on their first meeting in Spellbound:
  Toru: Know that you face Iron Guard Toru, one of the thousand sons of Okubo Tokugawa!
  Sullivan: That's gonna be nine hundred and ninety-nine sons if you don't get out of my face.
  • While fighting the god of demons at the end of Spellbound, Whisper throws its fire back at it:
  Whisper: Find your own tricks. Fire belongs to me.
  • After a long night watching a recently Heel–Face Turn-ed Toru, Faye reassures a nervous Dan Garrett:
  Faye: Don't worry, Mr. Garrett, I'm still the most dangerous person here.
  • From the climax of Warbound:
  The Pathfinder: "I am everywhere!"
  Faye: "Well, so am I!"
• Badass Bystander: In the third book, none other than Yip Man himself appears as one of these, taking on several teleporting, magic-wielding ninjas bare handed.
• Bad Powers, Good People: One of the Grimnoir is a Lazarus, an Active who can bring back the dead, and are universally despised.
• Batman Gambit: Harkeness is running one against the Chairman.
• Batter Up!: Toru's weapon of choice is an enormous steel tetsubo (spiked club) that most people who aren't Brutes or Spikers wouldn't be able to lift (about 80 pounds). He eventually hits one of Crow's demons with it so hard that it breaks. He then finds a new one during the next book.
• Battle Couple:
  • Jake & Delilah used to be one before he got arrested. They later get a brief chance to work side by side.
  • Faye and Francis, briefly, when fighting together as Grimnoir agents.
• Battle in the Center of the Mind: In Warbound, Toru has to resist the Pathfinder spore that he's been infected with. While he briefly loses control of his body, he manages to retain his mind.
• Berserk Button: Faye's dangerously unstable most of the time, but if Francis is threatened, she's downright terrifying.
  • She also reacts badly to pretty much anything involving her grandpa's death.
  • Trying to harm Jane will result in Dan ordering you to blow your own brains out, and you will consider it an excellent idea.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Faye very calmly vows to kill both Madi and the Chairman himself. She manages half of that, facilitates the other half and makes up the difference in mooks and property damage.
  • Jake notes that she's really the nicest person in the world most of the time, until you cross her invisible line, whereupon she just kills you without a second thought.
  • Dan's a nice guy; in fact, his power revolves around being pleasant and ingratiating with people. Unless he gets really mad, whereupon he speaks with the voice of a god and can cause all but the most strong-willed individuals to instantly commit suicide.
• Beware the Superman: Part of the Imperium's plan for taking over the world is to sow distrust of Actives in the United States, by framing them for a Peace Ray attack.
• BFG: Jake carries three different ones at various points of the book. During an Imperium assault on a Grimnoir safehouse, Heinrich and Francis break out a Browning M2 heavy machine gun, a weapon so large that Faye mistakes it for some piece of farm machinery. In the introduction of Hard Magic, Jake carries a Lewis Gun, usually vehicle or aircraft mounted but usually crew-served, weighing roughly 30 pounds without ammunition, and firing 50 to 600 RPM of .303, 30.06, or 7.92x57 Mauser. He evidently uses it as a shoulder-fired weapon.
  • In Warbound, an Imperium super-bazooka that's basically a launcher for Boomer power appears, and it obliterates the top half on an apartment building in one shot.

• The Big Damn Kiss: Faye and Francis share one of these when they're reunited in the third book. They have maybe fifteen minutes before the world is destroyed, but she figures they can spare a few seconds.
• Boxed Crook: Jake is a fairly free-range one at the beginning of the book.
• Boxing Lessons for Superman: Not all Powers are useful for combat, those that are have limited amounts of Power, and some combat-useful powers are most efficient when used to supplement mundane fighting. Everyone gets mundane combat lessons.
• Bullying a Dragon: One of the Grimnoir knights is rude to Faye. Browning reminds him that this is the girl who killed several hundred Imperium troops, fought the Chairman, and teleported an airship across the Pacific. The other knight quietly apologizes.
  • A lot of the prisoners in Rockville Penitentiary liked to pick on Jake in an attempt to make a name for themselves. They all ended up leaving in bags.
• Bunny-Ears Lawyer: A common trait of Cogs. Buckminster Fuller is a prominent example: he's staggeringly brilliant and has a habit of making up words and expecting everyone to understand them.
• Came Back Wrong: Lazaruses can bring people back from death, but most resurrectees go insane and become shambling monsters due to having to constantly experience the pain of their fatal injuries. Only a handful of strong-willed people such as Heinrich's Father and Delilah can remain functional for a long period of time.
• Cosmic Entity: The Power itself turns out to be some kind of massive space... thing, which is in a symbiotic relationship with the people of Earth. It's on the run from a mysterious Enemy; can you say 'Sequel Hook?'
• Chekhov's Gun:
  • Early on, it's said that the Chairman could only be killed by a direct hit from a Peace Ray/Geo-Tel. Guess how he dies at the end.
  • A literal one - the tiny pistol Faye buys for ten dollars at the start of the story to make herself feel better ends up saving her life, though not in the usual way.
  • The Rockville State Penitary is important to Jake's backstory as the place where the most powerful Active criminals are locked up. Guess where the Pathfinder goes to feed at the end of Warbound.
• Chekhov's Gunman:
  • Buckminser Fuller is introduced only briefly in Spellbound as the man who makes the dymaxions. In Warbound, he joins the regular cast and proves invaluable.
  • Dosan Saito is mentioned as one of Madi's teacher. In the long run, he turns out to be so much more than that.
  • Drew, the architect Francis meets briefly at the start of Warbound, turns out to be Pathfinder's chief agent in the USA.
  • Ori is a very minor character in the latter half of Hard Magic, introduced as trying to seduce Jake for a one-night stand, but becomes his love interest by Warbound and eventually marries him.
• Cliffhanger Copout: Jake and Toru's last scene in book 3 proper has them about to be killed by a point-blank Boomer attack from the fake Chairman. Then they both show up in the epilogue. Both had been rescued at the last second, Jake by Heinrich showing up and Fading him out, and Toru by his Shadow Guard brother Travelling him away.
• Cloudcuckoolander: Faye is not like you.
• Combat Pragmatist: Pretty much everyone, but Heinrich most of all. At one point, he actually bites his enemies.
• Commonality Connection: Despite his detesting Okies, when Travelin' Joe guesses that Faye might be a Traveler, he feels compelled to find out and then show her how to survive.
• Compelling Voice: The Mouths, such as Dan Garrett, can make people do what they tell them, and wish to do what they tell them. It's possible to resist, provided one realizes they're being manipulated.
• Contrived Coincidence:
  • Two of the few people capable of recognizing the false Chairman as an impostor just so happen to be stationed together in the place where the Grimnoir goes to pass this information.
  • Toru finished putting his Power Armour on for a test trial at the exact same moment his location is attacked.
• Corrupt Corporate Executive: Cornelius Gould Stuyvesant is all too happy to sell cutting-edge military tech to the Japanese, without caring for the Imperium's sadistic "schools" and experiments.
• Covers Always Lie: Every volume cover shows Sullivan hefting a Thompson SMG. His actual signature weapon, received early in book 1, is a heavily customized BAR light machinegun.
• Crapsaccharine World: Shanghai is a pretty nice place, with modern buildings, most of the war destruction patched up and everything you could ever imagine for sale. Give any reason to doubt your undying loyalty to the Imperium conquerors, however...
• Cute and Psycho: Faye is an adorable farm girl who will also kill anyone she thinks is a bad person without hesitation (sometimes with unfortunate results).

• Damsel in Distress:
  • At one point, Jane is kidnapped, and a rescue must be mounted.
  • Both Lady Origami and Whisper, in their backstories. Their nicknames stem from the way that, at the time of their rescue, they were too traumatized to speak and give their names. Both subsequently Took a Level in Badass.
• Dangerous Forbidden Technique: Using too much of your Power will kill you. (And everyone who risks it during the trilogy does die. And is awesome.)
• Dark Action Girl: Toshiko.
• Deadly Dodging: How Faye kills Toshiko. She has one of her allies shoot at herself, then teleports out just before the bullet hits, causing it to instead hit Toshiko, who had just teleported in in an attempt to backstab Faye.
• Deal with the Devil: Crow invokes this near the end of Spellbound. The demon just eliminates him as soon as it has what it wants.
• Decoy Damsel: Interesting variation in Spellbound: the attack is real, but Hammer deliberately provoked it and could have easily handled it herself. She just wanted to test Jake.
• Defector from Decadence: Toru.
• Demonic Possession: Inverted; Crow is a Summoner who can possess the demons he summons. He prefers these bodies over his real one, but using a powerful enough demon causes its personality to influence his own, which makes him somewhat Ax-Crazy while in such a body.
• Designated Girl Fight: Faye vs. Toshiko. Despite this, it's an awesome fight scene featuring frenetic Teleport Spam on a flaming zeppelin in the middle of a pirate attack on said zeppelin. Did we mention Toshiko is a Ninja?
• Deus ex Machina: Faye's Portal Cut skill shows up only once, in a pivotal moment, surprising absolutely everyone, and having done its job, promptly disappears, never to be used or mentioned again.
• Diesel Punk/Fantastic Noir: The setting is noir with magic powers, assisted by all the advantages mad science gives people.
• Differently Powered Individual: In-universe, supers are variously referred to as Actives, Magicals and more.
• Dirty Coward: Saito prefers to infect Toru with Pathfinder spore rather than face him in an "even" battle, despite the tremendous power difference between the two.
• Distressed Damsel: Jane is kidnapped by the Imperium in the middle of the book.
  • Damsel out of Distress: And at the climax she grabs a gun and starts shooting the Chairman's men, and even the Chairman himself. He admits he's impressed.
• Don't Be Ridiculous: One of the opening chapter quotes features one scientist gleefully mocking his colleague's theory that magic comes from the lost city of Atlantis. He concludes by smugly assuring him that magic comes from crystals.
• Driven to Suicide: Almost; Toru decides that because he sullied his father's name by believing the impostor's lies, he has to finish his father mission and then commit honorable suicide. A dream/vision of his father, imploring Toru to become Okubo's worthy successor, seems to finally dissuade him from this idea.
• Due to the Dead: Faye attends Whisper's funeral at the beginning of Warbound, having promised her before her suicide.
• Dude, Where's My Respect?: Actives saved President-Elect Roosevelt's life, and exposed the parties behind the assassination attempt - which was done to push the government to strip Actives of civil rights. Upon inauguration, FDR proceeds to submit an Active Registration Act to Congress - and requests that they not think too hard on whether or not said bill is even Constitutional.
• Dumb Muscle: The stereotype of Heavies is this.
• Dying Moment of Awesome: Dear God, Lance!
• Eldritch Abomination: The Enemy is a Planet Eater that chases the Power to feed on the worlds it's touched. Even pieces of this entity are almost as powerful as Chairman Tokugawa, and the Enemy itself is so horrible that a Fortune Teller capable of perceiving it bleeds when he tries to get a good "look" at it.
• Elite Mooks: The Iron Guard and Shadow Guard are superpowered, very highly trained and magically enhanced to boot.
• The Empire: The Imperium, natch.
• Encyclopedia Exposita: Each chapter is opened with some historical quote, throwing out hints about the Alternate History, such as Hitler being executed before rising to power, Theodore Roosevelt dying in World War I against the Kaiser's zombies, etc. Some are fictitious, some are modified version of real life quotes, some are said at a different time and place, and some are just the same as in real life.
• Enemy Mine: Toru joins forces with the Grimnoir to track down the Pathfinder.
• Equal-Opportunity Evil: The Chairman doesn't mind — hence Madi in the Iron Guard — but realities mean that the Iron Guard is mostly Japanese.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Cornelius Gould Stuyvesant is a thoroughly selfish bastard, but he does love his grandson Francis.
  • Harkeness cares for his granddaughter Jane and is very proud of the fact that she was able to counteract his curse for years.
• Even Evil Has Standards: Madi is actually quite squeamish about Unit 731.
• Evil Counterpart: See Evil Twin. Same applies to Faye and Toshiko.
• Evil Twin: Not a twin per se, but Jake and his brother (Madi) look similar enough that Faye shoots him on sight.
• Explain, Explain... Oh, Crap!: Madi does this to himself near the end of Hard Magic when he notices that Jake has brought Dan along. He remembers the dumpy little guy from the mansion, but can't quite remember what his power is... then he remembers, just as Dan commands Madi's troops to commit suicide.
• Explosive Overclocking: When Lance is fatally wounded by a Shadow Guard strike force in Warbound, he draws upon a lethal amount of his possession magic to take over the body of a Shadow Guard, deciding that he has nothing to lose.
• Extranormal Prison: The Rockville State Penitary is a facility made specifically to house Actives. It has deaf guards on staff to stop Mouths, extremely thick walls to have Fades and Travellers run out of Power before they'd leave, no fire and very little electricity to limit Torches and Cracklers' resources, and more. The only person who's ever managed to escape was a Ringer. Jake comments that he probably could have escaped if he wanted to - but it would have required him to kill a lot of the guards on the way out, and they hadn't done anything that he considered grounds for squishing them.
• Face Death with Dignity: The Japanese ambassador takes to an order to commit seppuku very calmly, asking Toru to assist him and finding time to by sympathetic to the Iron Guard and offering him last words of advice.
• Fair Cop: Hammer is one of the first female lawmen, and there's a reason there's a certain tension between her and Jake.
• Faking the Dead: The Grimnoir include several allegedly dead characters.
  • Lance pretended to have died in the attack that killed his wife and their baby.
  • Browning feigned that he had suffered a fatal heart attack.
  • Later, Faye does this to let her handle the Spellbound problems.
• False Flag Operation: In the second book President-elect Roosevelt is attacked by an Active assassin sent by the OCI so that they can manipulate public opinion and use that to pass various laws controlling Actives and place them under their authority.
• Fantastic Racism: Many people hate and fear Actives and even among Actives some types like Fades, Lazaruses and Mouths are disliked and distrusted.
• Farmer's Granddaughter: Faye.
• Fate Worse than Death: The "angels" and "demons" that are summoned by the Power are actually the remnants of the souls from the destroyed planets and/or dimensions that the Power has previously inhabited that have been destroyed by the Enemy.
• The Fettered: Jake could have been the first non-Shifter to escape Rockville, but he chose not to because he'd have had to kill several guards in the process, and he refused to kill honest men just doing their jobs.
• Fiction 500: Cornelius Gould Stuyvesant is the richest man in the world, and owner of United Blimp & Freight. Francis is his grandson, and ends up inheriting the company.
• Fights Like a Normal: Despite their oft-incredible powers, most of the characters default to firearms in battle, and everyone has guns for backup.
  • Some characters, like Hammer or Lance, have powers that are more or less useless in battle, but are nevertheless talented and dangerous fighters.
• Flaw Exploitation: Everyone's been told that you're evil. How can you tell them what the real evil guys are doing? Indulge in some "Villainous Gloating".
• Friendly Fire: Faye attacks Jake, believing he's Madi; Lady Origami attacks Faye when she appears out of nowhere; Faye attacks Toru when he wants to join up. None lethal but some serious consequences ensue.
• From Nobody to Nightmare: Faye starts the first book as a poor Okie girl with a power that's likely to get her killed trying to use it. By the end of the third, she's fought and injured the Chairman and survived that, teleported an entire airship thousands of miles, killed the uber-Summoned, and manages to kill a zeppelin battleship by herself.
• Functional Magic: The Active abilities are all rather rigid, and based on connections between the Actives and different sections of the Power, with a skilled Active being able to reach into adjacent sectors of the Power; the kanji/runes are based on replicating various parts of the Power, forming connections with it.
• Gadgeteer Genius: Much of the current technology is produced or at least initially developed by Cogs, whose Power is a supernatural aptitude for a particular branch of science.
• Genius Bruiser: Jake. Exceptionally well-read, brilliant enough to figure out what the Power really is, and a giant hulk of a man.
  • Invoked by Walter Donovan in one of the chapter quotes: "the ideal OCI man is a PhD who could win a bar fight."
• A God I Am Not: Faye gives up the Spellbound power at the end of the third book specifically to avoid getting a god complex.
• Good Is Not Nice: Ian Wright is an arrogant, argumentative jerk, but he's a loyal knight and can be incredibly brave in a pinch.
• Gravity Master: Sullivan and his brother Madi can control gravity. Most Heavies can only lighten objects that they try to carry, but Sullivan practiced with his Power enough that he can change the direction of gravity, amplify it, etc.
• Gun Porn: Toned down from the Monster Hunter International series, since they have magic to fight with too this time, but that doesn't keep John Moses Browning from giving Sullivan a tour of his workshop.
• Handicapped Badass: Madi only has one eye. Lance has a very pronounced limp.
• Happily Adopted: Faye... until her adopted parent is killed by Imperium agents.
• Having a Blast: Boomers.
• Healing Hands: Healers such as Jane are in high demand, and a standard part of any rich person's retinue.
• Healing Factor: Passive Healers. Also, anyone with one or more kanji of healing.
• Heart Is an Awesome Power: Lance's power is mostly strictly limited to recon unless there are large predators handy, but he can be pretty creative with it, as when he stops a car chase by making a cow run in front of the other car. And wink.
  • Heavies are generally considered among the most useless Actives out there, since all most of them can do is make heavy things a little lighter. Jake has practiced and studied enough that he's one of the most powerful characters in the series.
• Heavyworlder: Spikers/Heavies can become this by using their powers on themselves for prolonged periods of time.
• Heel Realization: Toru's implied to have one in his backstory; as he explains to one of the people he wronged, he used to partake in the Japanese blood games in China (with the Chinese people being the ones shedding blood) with as much joy as his fellow soldiers and Iron Guard, because the Chinese didn't feel like real people to the Imperium, until something happened that made them become very real to him.
• Hero with Bad Publicity: Near the beginning of Book Two, the Grimnoir are framed for an assassination attempt on FDR, and spend the rest of the book dealing with the fallout.
• Heroic Sacrifice:
  • George Bolander and Whisper both do this in Spellbound, the former so spectacularly that he becomes a folk hero.
  • In Warbound, an anonymous Iron Guard reveals the imposter Chairman at the cost of his life.
• Heroic Self-Deprecation:
  • In Spellbound, Jake, despite having saved the world twice at this point, believes that he shouldn't pursue a relationship with Hammer because she deserves someone better.
  • Dan jokes that his wife would run away screaming if she could see anything more of him than his innards, and it's implied that he jokes about it to mask a genuine feeling of inferiority.
• Historical Domain Character:
  • John J. "Black Jack" Pershing and John Moses Browning are both Grimnoir knights, and Sullivan has some unpleasant dealings with J. Edgar Hoover. Pershing mentions a Colonel Eisenhower when explaining something to Jake.
  • In the second book, Buckminister Fuller makes a brief but significant appearance (he has a larger role in the third book). A United States Navy "Lieutenant Heinlein" makes a briefer, much less significant appearance.
  • In the third book, it's revealed that Winston Churchill and William Donovan are Grimnoir elders.
  • Also in the third book, turns out that Rasputin was one of the Chairman's students.
  • In the second and third books, Francis's right-hand man is Raymond Chandler.
  • Warbound features a very brief cameo by Yip Man, who's a member of the Shanghai Grimnoir.
• Historical Person Punchline: The UBF accountant (who helped in the climactic battle, explaining that he fought with the Gordon Highlanders in World War I), turns out to be Raymond Chandler.
  • Hilariously subverted with Rasputin. Most readers have probably guessed his identity long before he reveals it, and he expects Faye to have done so as well. He's therefore rather disappointed to find she's never heard of him.
• Historical Villain Upgrade: In Real Life, Imperial Japan was racist, militaristic, and expansionist, with an array of atrocities to its name. The Imperium is all of that, turned up to eleven, and more successful.
• Honest Corporate Executive / Benevolent Boss: Francis, after he inherits UBF.
• Hope Spot: Just after defeating the Bull King, Delilah gets run through by a ninja.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: Faye kills Rasputin by Traveling him into the path of his own spell.
• Huge Guy, Tiny Girl: The massive Jake and the petite Delilah.
  • Non-romantic example in the two protagonists: enormous Jake and tiny Faye.
  • And another straight example with Jake and Lady Origami.
• Humans Are Special: It turns out that humans are the first rational, creative beings the Power has found, which is what makes it think it can defeat the Enemy at last.
• I Am Not Left-Handed: Faye isn't really a Traveler. She's a Cog whose specialty is understanding magic so well that she can use any power.
• I Am Not Pretty: Faye thinks of herself as quite plain. Most people who meet her seem to disagree.
• I Cannot Self-Terminate: When he's infected with the Pathfinder, Toru begs his brother to kill him, as he's tied up and can't do so himself. Hayate ignores him.
• I Can't Believe a Guy Like You Would Notice Me: Charmingly, neither Faye nor Francis can quite figure out what the other sees in them.
• If He Ever Does Anything to Hurt You:
  • Lance cautions Faye to be careful, because he really doesn't want to have to break Francis's neck for dishonoring her.
  • In the final book, Captain Southunder warns Sullivan that if he doesn't make Akane happy, he'll find himself having a lethal 'accident.' Courtesy of Akane of course, a Torch can take care of herself
• Insistent Terminology: Sullivan really prefers the term 'Gravity Spiker.'
• Insult to Rocks: After Faye calls Toshiko a fat cow, she mentally notes that that's not really fair, since cows are nice.
• Insurrectionist Inheritor: Cornelius Stuyvesant, the richest man in the world, makes Francis his sole heir, saying "You're the only one worth...a bucket of warm piss...in...in the whole lot". Their previous conversation was when Cornelius disowned him for taking a moral stand against the Imperium.
• Intangible Man: Heinrich, one of the Grimnoir knights, is a Fade, who can walk through walls and let weapons pass right through him.
• Inter-Class Romance: Faye and Francis
• Interservice Rivalry: The Iron Guard and Shadow Guard (or at least Madi and Toshiko) do not have a high opinion of each other. The BI and OCI conflict plays a significant role in the second book.
• It Has Been an Honor: Sullivan and Toru share a moment of this when surrounded by Imperium troops at the end of Warbound.
• It's Raining Men: In Warbound, Sullivan decides to interrupt the false Chairman's Shanghai visit. How? By donning a suit of Powered Armor and dropping in. From seventy-five thousand feet up.
• Jerkass: Cornelius. Gould. Stuyvesant.
• Just the First Citizen: In the epilogue of book three, Toru becomes the new Chairman. Well, he claims that he's just another one of the Emperor's ministers, but Jake doesn't doubt that Toru has managed to acquire the power of that position even if he hasn't gotten the official job title.
• Kingpin in His Gym: Just before the climactic battle of Hard Magic, there's a scene of Madi sparring with increasingly larger groups of Imperial Marines all at once. He compliments a man who managed to get through his guard during a 10-on-1 match.
• Known Only by Their Nickname:
  • The real name of Lady Origami (also known as Ori for short) is Akane. This doesn't get revealed until late in the third book.
  • Similarly, Whisper's real name is Colleen Giraudoux, which is only revealed posthumously when Faye attends her funeral.
• Ladykiller in Love: Francis had "been around a few blocks" before falling in love with Faye.
  "Francis had loved a lot of women. He only cared about one."
• Last-Minute Hookup: Jake only gets a love interest in the latter half of the final book of the trilogy.
• Last Request: Delilah makes one as a zombie, rather commandingly. Jake is to get over her, marry, have kids, and live to a ripe old age. The first three points are fulfilled as of the epilogue of Warbound.
• Let's Get Dangerous!: Lance is a Beastie, who can control animals, and generally uses squirrels, birds, and dogs for recon. And then the final battle in Spellbound he decides to borrows a Siberian Tiger from the National Zoo. In Warbound he uses a Polar Bear. And in his final battle he takes over an Imperium Shadow Guard and has him murder all his comrades before committing suicide.
• Like Father, Unlike Son: While Francis' father had morals more malleable than Play-Doh, Francis himself is the epitome of Honest Corporate Executive.
• Living Lie Detector: Justices, such as Hammer, can apply their power to discover the intent behind the speaker's words.
• Living on Borrowed Time / The Last Dance: Shortly after Delilah is killed, she is accidentally revived as a zombie by an Imperium necromancer. Rather than being immediately put down, she decides to go out fighting.
• Little Miss Badass: Faye, who may or may not be 18 yet and is pretty small. She irritates everyone trying to fight her by not being where they think she is and, in the final battle, kills around a hundred Imperium marines and wounds the Chairman. In Spellbound, the evil OCI chief is scared by Sullivan and a Lance-controlled Siberian Tiger. He's utterly terrified of Faye.
  • In Warbound she kills an Imperium Kaga-class zeppelin by herself. As in, she solos the largest, most powerful warship on the planet. In under four minutes. Mostly because it took her that long to find the ammunition magazine.
  • It's eventually revealed that she can use any power she wants.
• Made of Iron: Madi and Rokusaburo in particular, Brutes, Massives and people with kanji of durability in general.
• Magic A Is Magic A: Turns out there are very structured cosmological underpinnings to the seemingly-random magical gifts.
• Make Them Rot: Pale Horses can induce illness - sometimes truly horrific ones - in anyone they touch. This is why they're the only type of active hated more than Lazari.
• Makeup Is Evil: Downplayed. Faye thinks that Whisper's make up is a bit scandalous in America; she supposes it's different in France.
• Massive Numbered Siblings: Toru has nine hundred and ninety nine siblings; though granted, given the Chairman's age, it's uncertain how many of them are still alive by the time of the story.
  • Also, given the Chairman's whole "Immortal Samurai Warrior Poet" shtick, artistic license is probably being taken.
• Mass Teleportation: At the end of Hard Magic, Faye manages to teleport an entire zeppelin full of people out of harm's way.
• Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: In Warbound, severely wounded, unconscious Toru dreams of a past event, which goes off the rails as the Chairman reveals himself to be his own ghost, speaking to Toru from beyond the grave. He tells Toru that he's proud of him and he shouldn't have overlooked him - something that Toru, suffering from a bad case of "Well Done, Son" Guy, desperately needed to hear. Now, the question for the reader - is this the Chairman actually visiting Toru, or was it the Iron Guard's fever dream? Toru believes the former, but Okubo's slightly OOC behaviour leaves the matter ambiguous.
• Meaningful Rename:
  • Several Iron Guards adopt a new name.
  • Whisper and Lady Origami both adopted the nicknames they were given (when too traumatized to speak) as their names as they Took a Level in Badass.
• Meta Origin: All magic powers (be they innate or the kanji brands) come from The Power.
• Mighty Whitey: Madi is a villainous example leavened only by the fact that there are other Caucasians in the Iron Guard, albeit none of whom are on his level or that of the Japanese members.
• Mini Map: Faye has a "head map" that shows her all people and obstacles around her. It lets her teleport safely without ending up in a wall, makes her impossible to sneak up on, and she can punch the map through a communication spell to travel long distances.
  • All Travelers have a head map, but figuring out how to use it is hard and contributes to the Teleporter Accidents that kill most Travelers young.
• Mind Control: Beasties such as Lance can control animals and see through their eyes for reconnaissance. Mouths like Dan can control people to a limited extent, but can't make them do anything they wouldn't consider anyway.
• Mind over Matter: Francis comes from a long line of Movers.
• Mirror Match: Twice, Sullivan has to go head-to-head with his brother, pitting gravity powers against gravity powers. See also Faye vs. Toshiko
• Motor Mouth:
  • Faye. When she starts talking, she just doesn't stop.
  • Buckminster Fuller has a habit of talking a whole lot. Jake develops a habit of stopping him few sentences in.
• Mundane Fantastic: Actives are a known entity and many types like Heavies, Cracklers, Iceboxes and Movers are commonly employed while the rarer types like Healers and Cogs are highly sought after.
• Mundane Utility:
  • Donald Bryce is a Lazarus who works for the Grimnoir. He used to be an NYPD homicide detective known for always closing his cases.
  • Jake is a Heavy and can control gravity. In a fight, he often lugs a gun by limiting its weight until he has to shoot. (And then increases it while shooting to limit recoil.)
• Near-Death Experience: Both Jake and Faye. When caught up in it, they can see the two most powerful beings on Earth: The Power itself, and the Chairman.
• Necromancer: In-setting, an Active (such as Hiroyasu) that can raise and command zombies is called a "Lazarus." They are the second most universally hated groups of Actives, even by other Actives, due to their power.
• Negative Space Wedgie: Nixies can create black holes, which fortunately never grow more than a mile or so across except for the giant one that Faye creates to swallow the Enemy at the end of Warbound.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: In the first book Faye almost kills Sullivan after mistaking him for Madi, his older brother.
• Nietzsche Wannabe: The Chairman's philosophy has elements of this; Madi takes those elements and runs with 'em as far as they can go.
• Ninja: The Shadow Guard. Membership is restricted to highly trained Fades and Travelers.
• Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot: Ninjas, pirates, and zombies all come together for the big climactic fight scene of Hard Magic.
  • Then, of course, robots show up in the sequel Spellbound.
• Noble Bigot: Travelin' Joe hates the Okies that pass by his farm, but not so much that he doesn't adopt one to keep her from killing herself with her power.
• Not Quite Saved Enough: The Chairman killed two Pathfinders of The Enemy, but a third is on the way and he isn't around to stop it this time. He actually only killed one. The third Pathfinder is actually the second, which escaped him and has been subverting influential Actives around the world for half a century, and is now ready to call its master.
• No-Sell: Iron Guard are tough. It takes fifty Gs to kill Rokusaburo, and Toru's only reaction to a point-blank shot to the head is annoyance.
• Odd Friendship: Smooth, friendly Mouth Dan and taciturn, paranoid Fade Heinrich.
  • Similarly, enormous, stoic Sullivan and the tiny, Cute and Psycho ball of excitement that is Faye.
• Oddly Common Rarity: The first book mentions multiple times that Healers in particular are the rarest of the rare among the rare individuals at are Active... and yet it also mentions multiple forms of Actives who are so rare that they're barely known. People with enough money can find multiple Healers to have on-call, but no one can find a Nixie to ask what he does, despite the name being known. The second book doesn't have anyone talk about how rare Healers are, probably because the heroes keep finding Actives they didn't know of in the first book.
• Oh, Crap!: In Spellbound, OCI thug Sharps has this reaction when he realizes that Heinrich, whom he had just been working over, has gotten his magic back.
• One Person, One Power: An in-setting rule of thumb to which Chairman Okubo Tokugawa is the sole exception as far as anyone knows, though people who are very skilled with their one power can often emulate a related one. For example, Jake can manipulate his density to a certain degree like a Massive. Faye is actually a Cog whose power is understanding all the other powers. She just happened to latch onto Traveling first, probably because she's the Spellbound.
• Out-of-Character Alert: Toru tests the Chairman by asking him to interpret one of his poems. The Chairman answers with a perfectly acceptable interpretation. But the real Chairman would never have lowered himself to interpreting one of his poems.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: In Spellbound, the fact that Heinrich is really eager to leave the island is a hint to Sullivan that something is badly wrong.
• Pet the Dog:
  • In a very human and even kind moment, the Chairman consoles Sullivan over Delilah's death and helps him come to terms with it; Sullivan even sincerely thanks him for it... right before saying that he still plans on killing him regardless.
  • It's eventually revealed that the reason Toru got assigned to the US Embassy - an stain on a honour of an Iron Guard - was because he opposed the horrible practices of Japanese soldiers in China.
• Phone Call from the Dead: At the beginning of Spellbound, the Chairman uses Edison's Spirit Phone^note Something Edison once told a reporter he was working on IRL because he didn't want to admit that he was between big projects at the time to communicate with Jake from beyond the grave.
• Playing with Fire: Torches. Most Torches are actually employed to put out fires, especially on zeppelins.
• Playing with Syringes: Frequent mention is made of the horrific medical experiments carried out by Unit 731.
• Pocket Protector: In their Teleport Spam duel, Toshiko believes she has the upper hand when she slices into what she thinks is Faye's spine. That is until Faye reveals that what was actually hit was the cheap pistol she had purchased earlier. Toshiko does not take this revelation well.
• Poisonous Person: Harkeness is a Pale Horse, an Active so rare they border on mythological status. He can control his power at will, but that doesn't make Stuyvesant any less wary of him.
• Politically Incorrect Villain: Despite being set in the 1930s, by far the most explicitly racist (American) character is Crow.
• Portal Cut: How Faye cuts the Chairman's hands off.
• Posthumous Character: The Chairman dying doesn't stop him from casting a long shadow on the plot - or interfering in it, for that matter.
• Power Armor: The Imperium developed some for the Iron Guard, which were restricted to the elites because of the difficulty of manufacture. Fuller makes a set for Sullivan in the third book. While wearing one, Toru is described as a walking samurai tank.
• Power-Strain Blackout: Using too much power at once can put an Active into a coma, or even kill them.
• Power Tattoo: The kanji used by the Imperium to enhance their operatives. They are technically brands or scars though, as opposed to actual tattoos.
• Really 700 Years Old: The Chairman is the very first Active, and is thus considerably older than he looks. Other members of the Dark Ocean were given dramatically reduced aging by him, but were not immortal.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Francis delivers one of these to Franklin Roosevelt. Needless to say, it comes back to bite him.
• Reassigned to Antarctica: Literally, by implication: it's noted that only truly incompetent Imperium officers get assigned to the Pathfinder monitoring stations built near the poles.
• Required Secondary Powers: Iceboxes are immune to cold. Travellers have the ability to track everything around them so they they don't accidentally kill themselves through a Teleporter Accident (Though many of them die before they figure out how to use it). Brutes have harden bones and skin to withstand their own strength. Conversely, Massive have above normal strength to enable them to move with their own density. Averted with Torches and Edisons, who are not immune to fire and electricity, respectively.

• Rule of Cool: Are autonomous war robots programmed by perforated tapes plausible? Could a demon hundred feet tall even stand? Is it likely to have a Power Armour in nineteen thirties? Wouldn't a fall from seventy thousand feet kill you? Do you care about that?
• Sadistic Choice: Presented by an accident rather than malice. When Faye shoots Jake, and Heinrich shoots her, Jane only has enough healing power to save one of them.
• Scarily Competent Tracker: As a Justice, Hammer can use her Power to find a target's "true path", allowing her to easily track anyone.
• School of Seduction: Part of Toshiko's training as a ninja, as Madi notes. He exploits this.
• Second Love: Both Jake and Lady Origami lost their original loves.
• Seen It All: Due to his advanced age & extensive travels, the Chairman suffers from a mild case of this.
• Seppuku: A fixture of honor-bound Imperium culture, treated as a normal part of life there. The false Chariman uses this to get rid of problematic people, and Toru initially proclaims that he will commit seppuku after finishing his father's quest.
• Sequel Hook: The ending has Toru and Sullivan on a beach, with the latter stating that, while the Imperium has shut down its schools and Unit 731, war may resume one day with America or the Grimnoir. He also speculates that the Enemy may one day find a way to escape and have to be dealt with for good. On a positive note, Faye has become an inventor that's changing the world with her inventions and her next project might involve the fact that she misses Travelling...
• Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness: Buckminster Fuller. This is apparently a trait he possessed in Real Life.
• She Cleans Up Nicely: Faye turns out to look really good in a nice dress.
• Shock and Awe: Cracklers, although they prefer to be called "Edisons."
• Shout-Out: When Sullivan stops to ask directions from an Imperium soldier: "English! Do you speak it?"
  • After Francis inherits the family fortune, he considers wearing a costume when performing his Grimnoir duties to distinguish himself from his playboy millionaire public image. He decides against it.
  • When Sullivan drops in on the Imperium in Shanghai, a couple of Iron Guards have a "Is it a bird/plane/man?" conversation.
  • The climax of Spellbound features a hundred-foot super-demon climbing the Washington Monument while fighting off biplanes.
  • In ‘’Warbound’’ Sullivan returns to Rockville to recruit a sociopathic inmate who is an expert psychiatrist and profiler.
• Shut Up, Hannibal!: Crow tries to convince Faye to come with him quietly, offering to spare her friends and explain the true nature of her power to her. Her response:
  Faye: "You should have thought of that before you beat up my boyfriend."
  • In the same book, Dr. Bradford outlines his grand vision to Francis to try to get him on board with it. Francis responds with "Fuck your vision!"
• Sinister Minister: Rasputin the Black Monk is posing as a Russian holy man in Warbound. Faye is quite offended that a man who wants to help the Pathfinder kill all of God's creatures is posing as a man of Christ.
• Sky Pirate: The last piece of the Geo-Tel is protected by Southunder, who preys on Imperium ships in the Pacific ocean from his zeppelin.
• The Spartan Way: The Imperium's infamous magic schools take anyone with a drop of power away from their families to be pushed as hard as they can. Thousands have died from being considered too weak or being pushed too far.
• Stealth Hi/Bye: Faye, being a Traveler, does this all the time. Given the paranoia inherent to the Grimnoir and the air pirates, she frequantly has to talk people out of shooting her after she shows up.
• Super-Fun Happy Thing of Doom: Tesla's "Peace Ray."
• Super-Strength: Delilah and Toru. Known as Brutes
• Swarm of Rats: Lance unleashes one of these in Warbound
  "So much blood!"
• Technician Versus Performer: Zig-zagged; while Faye's natural talent lets her run circles around the well-trained Toshiko, Jake's greater power does not generally keep him from getting smacked around by the more skillful Madi.
  • Given his Training from Hell and Iron-Guard-issue kanji brands, Madi was both more powerful and more skilled than Jake. Jake was just smarter and more focused on winning — as opposed to proving a point.
• Teleport Spam: Any fight involving a Traveler such as Faye, Toshiko, Travelin' Joe, etc.
• Teleporter Accident: One of the reasons Travelers are so rare: most kill themselves early on by teleporting into flying insects or tree-branches.
  • Faye gets a beetle stuck in her foot early in Hard Magic.
• The Dragon / The Heavy: Madi, to the Chairman.
  • In the second book, Crow to Bradford.
• Time Abyss: In Warbound, an oracle states that the Power has been on the run from the Enemy for at least 1 million years.
• Token Evil Teammate: Sociopathic psychologist Dr. Wells in the third book. In the end it's revealed that he's taken control of the Shanghai underworld.
  • Arguably Mr. Bryce the Lazarus, who seems to enjoy turning dead criminals into zombies and beating on them a little too much.
• Took a Level in Badass: Whisper and Lady Origami both had backstories of turning from Damsels In Distress to effective and dangerous agents of Grimnoir.
• Training from Hell: Madi has this in his backstory. Presumably, the other Iron Guards did as well.
• Tranquil Fury: Jao the Icebox in Warbound. When he meets the man who murdered his family, he very calmly lists the man's crimes while freezing him solid.
• Trigger-Happy: Faye is a strong believer in "shoot first, ask questions later", which comes to bite her in the back first when she shoots Jake, thinking he's Madi, and almost gets killed for it by other Grimnoir, and then when she shoots Toru, not realizing he's on her side, and he completely No Sells it.
• Ugly Guy, Hot Wife: Plain, overweight Dan and movie-star gorgeous Jane. It helps that, as a Healer, she sees people's insides rather than their outsides.
  Jane: "Oh, Dan! I love you just the way you are: squishy and filled with juice."
• Unequal Rites: There are two forms of magic in this world: the innate magic that people are born with, and magic that comes through drawn symbols (kanji). As it turns out, they have the same ultimate source.
• The Unfunny: Toru. He has a sense of humor; he just considers it beneath his dignity to let it show. Doesn't stop him from being frequently hilarious.
  Toru: "I am wet."
• Victory Is Boring: The reason the Chairman doesn't just wipe out the Grimnoir? Because they're interesting, and being immortal can get very dull sometimes.
• Walking the Earth: The Chairman's backstory includes a long period of doing this.
• Wave-Motion Gun: Peace Rays. One shot, at seven percent power, is sufficient to wipe the city of Mar Pacifica off the map. The Geo-Tel is even more powerful, able to destroy everything for hundreds of miles around; The Tunguska Event was a test fire.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: In the assault on OCI headquarters, Lance manages to hijack a Siberian tiger. Then everything goes to hell, almost literally. What happened to the tiger is never explained.
• What Beautiful Eyes!: When Francis first meets Faye, he doesn't find her that attractive… except for her striking gray eyes. They're easily her most commented on feature.
• What Measure Is a Non-Human?: A sadly based-on-real-events variety; the Imperium soldiers have been trained to see the Chinese as subhuman, so many treat them like animals or even objects.
• We Can Rule Together: The Chairman speculates about making the offer to Jake. Jake's answer?
  Jake: "Whatever."
  The Chairman: "You sum up so much philosophy in so few words."
• Wicked Cultured: The Chairman. Madi tries to emulate his mentor in this, but fails miserably.
• With Great Power Comes Great Insanity: Crow's summoning magic has been augmented to the point that he can possess the bodies of the creatures he summons. The drawback is that this has a negative effect on his mental stability, especially when he uses a powerful demon.
• "Well Done, Son" Guy: Toru desperately needs to prove himself as a worthy son to his father - who's the Chairman himself, making this rather complicated. Turned into a somewhat sweet moment in Warbound as he has a vision of his father speaking to him from beyond the grave, admitting that in his pursuit of power he might've overlooked some of his best children (with Toru, of course, implied to be one of those).
• Well-Intentioned Extremist:
  • The Chairman just wants humanity to be strong so we'll be able to fight The Enemy when it arrives.
  • Harkeness curses the General in order to set up a Batman Gambit against the Chairman.
• Wham Line: Buckminster Fuller mentioning that Faye is a very gifted Cog.
• Worthy Opponent: The Chairman views Sullivan as this. The feeling isn't entirely mutual.
  • Toru comes to think of Sullivan as this over the course of the second and third books. This time, the feeling's mutual.
• Would Hit a Girl: Most Grimnoir. When there are members of the allegedly weaker sex capable of bending steel bars with their bare hands, it's safer to treat all potential enemies equally. As Dan puts it:
  Dan: I work in an environment where it isn't terrible uncommon to have the supposedly weaker sex bend steel beams with their bare hands. I treat all my threats equally.
• Wretched Hive: In Warbound, Sullivan muses to himself that, if God doesn't destroy Shanghai, then he owes Sodom and Gomorrah an apology.
• X-Ray Vision: Healers like Jane only ever see people as walking bags of fluids and organs.
• Yellow Peril: Averted. Despite the Imperium (which consists of Japan and its conquered territories of China and Korea) being the initial antagonists of the series, it's made clear that this is due to the Chairman and his followers, not the people in general. When Sullivan meets Lady Origami, a kind Japanese woman working as a crewman on a Grimnoir pirate zeppelin, the captain points out that Japan only became the fascist hellhole that it is by killing or exiling people like her. It's also shown in Spellbound that the United States could be just one corrupt and powerful senator away from becoming another Imperium.
• You Cannot Grasp the True Form: Trying to draw the Enemy causes an oracle to start writing so hard that his own blood mixes with the ink and he claims the only a blood-ink mixture can begin to illustrate its horror.
• You Fight Like a Cow: Faye (who grew up on a dairy farm) spends much of her fight with Toshiko tossing insults at the ninja.
• You Have Failed Me: Dan clears a room of Imperium soldiers by telling them that they have failed the Chairman and must atone with their lives. Thanks to his Mouth abilities, all the non-Iron Guard present believe him and commit sepukku on the spot.
• You Killed My Adoptive Grandfather: Why Faye joins the Grimnoir.
• Zeppelins from Another World: Kind of. Zeppelins play a large role in the story, but it takes place during a time when they really were used in Real Life, though not to the extent they are in the story. It's also justified, as Cracklers and Torches manage to alleviate many of the dangers of the technology.
• Zombie Apocalypse:
  • The second Pathfinder attacked the Chairman and the Dark Ocean with wave after wave of skinless undead bodies that it had taken control of. The third (or more accurately, the second after surviving the battle and learning its lesson) Pathfinder spreads them around, preparing to feast on all Active living zones at once.
  • On a smaller scale, the fate of Berlin after the Great War, as the zombies raised by the Kaiser have been locked up there.

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